Band of Thebes

Chris Shirley's Playing by the Book

Ten years in the making, Chris Shirley's debut novel out today Playing By The Book [and Kindle] has already been named by the Advocate as one of this summer's ten great lgbt reads:

"Jake Powell is a 17-year-old high school newspaper editor and the son of a preacher man at home in Alabama, but when he lands a spot at Columbia University's prestigious summer journalism program, his New York City dreams become real. What New York does for Jake, of course, is to bring all his feelings to the surface, including his burgeoning attraction to a handsome classmate. In his first novel, Shirley — president of the Lambda Literary Foundation— offers up a optimistic but not overly romanticized look at youth, becoming oneself, and the discomfort and joy that comes from finding out who you want to be in the world, whether your parents like it or not." 

David Levithan, Darren Stein Discuss Changes in Gay Books, Movies

After so many Debbie Downer dispatches about the demise of the gay novel, successful editor-author David Levithan and director Darren Stein are super psyched about the state of queer storytelling. In a short conversation for the Guardian, David says,

"The exciting thing is how many of them there are, and how many different stories they have to tell. (For great examples of this, check out Nina LaCour's new novel Everything Leads to You or Alex London's Proxy.) I don't think there's the pressure anymore to tell "the" lgbtq story, and instead the focus is on telling "a" lgbtq story. There's not the assumption that there's a single story to tell; instead it's about finding all of the interesting facets, and illuminating them. As in life, being lgbtq is a part of the character and part of the story, but it doesn't have to determine the entire plot."

They also list their favorite queer characters in movies and books, which introduced me to James Howe's novel Totally Joe [and Kindle].

"There are many gay characters I love, but I probably love Joe the most. He's only twelve, but he is out to his family and friends, has his first crush, loves his pop divas, and is telling his life in alphabetical order. He has his blue moods, but mostly he lives in Technicolor, unrepentantly. I love that when James Howe created him, he seemed like a radical invention for children's literature. Now he's a kid you see every time you visit a school."

David's most recent book is Every Day. Darren's movie is the gay high school comedy GBF [stream now]. I watched it. Even though it boasts the new, new acceptance, the movie feels really dated? And that thing where you know what's going to happen before it happens? And what the characters are going to say before you check online to see if it's really ten years since Mean Girls? And nineteen years since Clueless? Which makes you sad? Inside? Sort of? But then omg that blond girl wasted in like the minorest role is the incredible Evanna Lynch. Luna Lovegood! More sad.

Say what you will, but despite its tired overall story arc, Superbad is full of surprises. To a lesser extent, so is last summer's fake family comedy We're the Millers. One surprise there is when Ron Swanson wet-fingers Jason Sudeikis' earhole. Another surprise is the terrific young actor Will Poulter, who won a Bafta for this funny, heartfelt performance.

From Fag to GWM

Krissy Bells has released a new novel Fag [and Kindle] about Aaron Garrett, a closeted high school football star with loving parents and a nice girlfriend. His double life becomes even complicated when a has-been celebrity from his small Southern town makes antigay comments and some locals rally to support the biogtry. (Compare with Bill Konigsberg's Lammy-winning gay high school football novel Out of the Pocket [and Kindle].)

Richard Eisbrouch's seventh novel GWM [and Kindle] explores 30-something architect Harry Sussman's hopeful misadventures looking for a potential husband in western Massachusetts. Among his other books are Mexico, The Reluctant Master, The Pendleton Omens, and Web Guys.

Jacqueline Woodson Selected for Hans Christian Andersen Shortlist

Yesterday, out lesbian Jacqueline Woodson, who lives with her partner and kids in Brooklyn, added to her huge list of prizes -- among them, two National Book Awards, three Newbery Awards, three Coretta Scott King Honors, and two major lifetime achievement awards -- a finalist of the Hans Christian Andersen Awards. Chosen from a longlist of fifty-eight writers from thirty-three countries, the six on the shortlist are:

·       Ted van Lieshout from the Netherlands. Lieshout uses a dialogue of words and images. With his original and visual writing style he observes the world with a different perspective every time. He is always looking for new styles and techniques to shape both words and pictures.

·      Houshang Moradi Kermani from Iran. Kermani has been writing creative humanistic works for children and adults for over four decades. Nature, village, family, and poverty together with self-respect, peace and mutual understanding are the most frequent subjects of his work.

·      Mirjam Pressler from Germany. “Without books the world remains a confining place and limits what we can imagine and consider doing,” says Pressler. “We need many different books. Books provide us with perspectives. A certain book can acquire an important, world-changing meaning.”

·       Nahoko Uehashi from Japan. Uehashi tells stories that are replete with imagination, culture and the beauty of a sophisticated process and form. Her literary subjects are based on ancient Japanese mythology and science-fiction fantasy that are deeply rooted in human reality. 

·       Renate Welsh from Austria. Welsh focuses on children’s social reality therefore enabling them to cope with their own lives. Family crisis and social injustice, illnesses, social exclusion, violence at home and at school, isolation and identity conflicts are depicted with remarkable honesty.

·       Jacqueline Woodson from the USA. Woodson often features African-American characters in her books because she feels strongly that children need to see themselves reflected in books. Each book she writes is a new experience, a way to learn something new or engage with a different subject that matters to her.

Gay Teen Movie The Geography Club Opens Today in Four Cities & VOD

Looks like another case of when good books happen to bad filmmakers with today's limited release of the movie adapted from Brent Hartinger's much-loved gay YA novel Geography Club [Kindle] published ten years ago. A lot has happened to lgbt youth in the intervening decade and the trailer's leaden pleas for tolerance and self-acceptance feel dated. Also, even in the ancient year of 2003, teenagers coped with their misery by being funny, yet the trailer is 100% humorless. Unfortunately, ten years ago is also when these actors were in high school themselves, and it's ridiculous to watch hot Justin Deeley, 27, and Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky, 25, trying to play twinks. Maybe the trailer used only the worst moments but viewers in a post-Glee world deserve more than pious good intentions.

For anyone into the wish fulfillment of dating the cute closeted quarterback, the full movie is available now on VOD.

So far, it has a respectable 60 on Metacritic. 

Two Boys Kissing

Two weeks from now will mark the tenth anniversary of David Levithan's semi-classic debut, the "dippy, happy" teen novel Boy Meets Boy, and this week he releases his eighteenth book, Two Boys Kissing [Kindle]. Based on a real event, the novel follows two seventeen year-olds, Craig and Harry, as they attempt to break the record for world's longest kiss. If you're not a teen and guess the book has nothing for you, think again: It's narrated by a Greek chorus of "gay uncles" from the generation lost to aids. A starred PW review called it "a landmark achievement," and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-. 

Some of David's best works are collaborations, most notably with John Green for Will Grayson, Will Grayson about two boys one gay, one straight, who have the same name; and with Rachel Cohn for Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, which became an okayish Michael Cera movie that was not entirely degayed.

Ever inventive, his most recent novel was Every Day, a NYT bestseller about a boy who each morning wakes up as a different person but always in love with the same girl. So far his only adult book is the gay novella The Lover's Dictionarythat both charmed and suffered from being written as dictionary entries.

Kergan Edwards-Stout Talks with Trebor Healey

Author of the award-winning Songs for the New Depression [Kindle] and ace interviewer, Kergan Edwards-Stout last week aimed his Q's at me and Thebes' annual poll. This week he gets A's from novelist Trebor Healey.

Trebor's first novel Through It Came Bright Colors [Kindle] won the Ferro-Grumley Award in 2004, yet he only published his second and third novels this fall. Faun [Kindle], about a high school boy who turns into a satyr, is his first book to be set in Los Angeles where he has lived for 12 years. A Horse Named Sorrow [Kindle], a late-80s aids novel leaves San Francisco for a cross-country bicycle trip:

Kergan: One of the key images in the book is a bicycle wrapped in different strings. How did that come to you?

Trebor: I actually rode a bicycle across the country in the summer of 1986. It was an amazing way to travel and felt to me like traveling by horse, which is how the whole horse/bike/sorrow metaphor first came together. The speed, the human scale, the way you had to maintain your vehicle and plot your trip. It's very meditative and seemed a perfect style of journey for a person in need of retreat and reflection. As for the strings, I think that came from how kids used to tie strings around each other's ankles and wrists, and the idea was that you'd make a wish, and when the string came off, the wish you'd made would come true. There is a lot about wishing in the book, both the good and the bad of it.

Read the full interview on Huffington Post or LGBTQ Nation.

Trans Teen Novel 'Almost Perfect' Wins ALA Stonewall Book Award

For the first time the American Library Association has announced its Stonewall Book Award for YA lgbt fiction simultaneously with its biggest awards, the Newberry and the Caldecott, greatly increasing the coverage for winner Brian Katcher's Almost Perfect [[Kindle]]. Stonewall judges called the novel of straight high school boy Logan Witherspoon falling for the new girl Sage Hendricks who turns out to be trans "exceptional... sensitive, haunting and revelatory."

Judges also named four Stonewall honor books:

James Klise's Love Drugged [[Kindle]], which Stephen McCauley praised in Thebes' poll as "a warm and very funny high-school novel about a pill that 'cures' homosexuality.  Perfect reading in the middle of the current debate about bullying and teen suicide."

David Levithan & David Green's co-authored Will Grayson, Will Grayson [[Kindle]], chosen as the best LGBT fiction of the year by Tom Dolby ("charming") and Lesléa Newman ("I absolutely loved this book!")

David Walliams' The Boy in the Dress [[no US Kindle]] "A boring house on a boring street in a boring corner of England is no place for a soccer-playing boy in a dress," say the Stonewall judges.

Davida Wills Hurwin's Freaks and Revelations [[Kindle]] about which the judges said, "Hatred of difference—real and perceived—plays out in this moving exploration of the journey from fear and hate to tolerance and hope."

Brent Hartinger, on the scene at the ALA's annual meeting, thinks the new inclusion of the Stonewall announcement is a direct response to Lambda's "ill-conceived" rule to limit their awards only to LGBT authors rather than remain open to any LGBT book. He writes, "I can report that the Lambda's recent policy change was unanimously considered a bad idea by everyone I talked to, gay and straight. In other words, within the children's book industry itself, the Lambda Awards are already less respected than they were a year ago."

Stonewall's winner Almost Perfect is excluded from consideration for the Lammys because Brian Katcher is straight.

NYT: David Levithan & John Green's New Gay Novel "Miraculous"

Reprising the coauthors-writing-alternate-chapters formula that made Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist a hit, David Levithan, this time with John Green, has created a novel "so tightly woven that it begins to feel miraculous," according to NYT critic Regina Marler. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, on sale now, is about two teenagers who have the same name. "One is a gay misanthrope who thinks he’s found his soul mate on the Internet, and the other is the nebbishy straight best friend of Tiny Cooper, a giant in every sense of the term: a 6-foot-6 football player, out and proud since the fifth grade, and the star of his own enormous life...Tiny Cooper feels not a moment of shame or alienation. When yet another boyfriend breaks up with him — by phone, by text, by Facebook status — he weeps publicly. He’s writing a musical about his life called Hold Me Closer, in which his best friend figures as “Phil Wrayson” and all 18 ex-boyfriends are depicted onstage." 

The Kansas City Star critic says, " it's a heartwarming read that will make you feel like you're not quite so alone."

In her review, Reginia Marler pairs Will Grayson, Will Grayson with another novel about lgbt students mounting a high school musical, A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner. The narrator, Cass, "a short-haired, athletic, math-loving senior" is apparently the only person in school who isn't positive she's a lesbian. Says Marler, "But the strength of this promising novel is its emotional reach, from mourning through identity crisis through new love."

Kirkus praised Horner's debut saying, "More than a love story, this is a tale of survivors coping with the death of a friend, a girlfriend and the glue that held them all together. Bittersweet but never mawkish and punctuated with just the right amount of teen hipster humor. "Ninjas can divide by zero," the cast sings while flinging food-coloring-and-corn-syrup blood at the audience, and both Cass and readers laugh through tears."

Horner is a librarian in Brooklyn. Marler is the editor of Vanessa Bell's letters and the anthology Queer Beats: How the Beats Turned America On to Sex.